Album Notes

Only J.J. Vicars could pull off a Dance remix of a Surf instrumental and do it with such flair! When work began on MELTDOWN Hugh Ashton (dobro player with J.J.'s Blues/Folk/Country/Western-Swing duo The Urban Achievers) was the first to contribute a track, laying down a reverb-drenched lap steel. However, as the song began to take shape with the addition of Bull Durham's keyboards the steel guitar didn't fit and J.J. was left scratching his head as to what to do with it. Leaving out Hugh was not an option! Fate works in strange ways. When ol' Bull had recorded his Cheeze Organ he had also recorded a synth drone that didn't quite fit into the picture. Bob works in mysterious ways. These two oddball parts that didn't fit in with the main track sounded perfect together! The synth drone gave it that Dance remix sound and the choppy edits on the lap steel surprisingly added to that (the original plan was to recut the part). All it needed was a stereotypical Dance beat drum machine and it was set.

Well, it should have been set. The earliest rough mix of it was the best one but the tracks weren't saved. It was assumed that simply swapping out Glenn Rios' drums for the drum machine was all that was neede, but where the scratch tracks had been recorded to a drum machine the rhythm guitar and bass had been re-recorded to fit Glenn's syncopated drumming. The syncopated guitar and bass clashed with the straight beat of the drum machine and had to be re-recorded and remixed, beginning a long process of trying to duplicate that original rough mix.

Eventually it all came together and with a little post-production beefing up kinda sounded like something you'd hear in a Dance club. That's no joke, several of J.J.'s friends (musician and non-musician both) who are into Dance music were consulted throughout the "remixing". Just as with the original MELTDOWN all proceeds from the sale of this Dance remix go to help the survivors of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11th, 2011. To read the full story scroll down or visit http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/prematureevacuatio

###

On March 11th, 2011 northeastern Japan was struck by a 9.0 earthquake and resulting 23-foot tsunami. While many foreign residents fled Japan claiming concern over the Fukushima nuclear rector -now referred to as "flyjin", a spin on "gaijin", meaning "foreigner"- American ex-pat musician J.J. Vicars was one of the many who stayed put and reported the real news in light of the U.S. media's sensationalist "armageddon" spin and fabrications.

While reporting the news via Facebook he cracked that he was going to write a Link Wray styled instrumental and call it MELTDOWN, to which Mississippi native and Orange, TX resident Bull Durham commented that he would add some keys and they'd be smokin'! Never one to back down from a sick joke, J.J. broke out his Epiphone WildKat and started noodling around. By the end of the weekend the instrumental was written and on Monday, March 21st, made its stage debut during a fundraiser concert at the Pink Cow in Shibuya, Tokyo which coincidentally happens to be within walking distance of the club Shibuya Eggman that FOX News listed as a nuclear reactor.

In the audience that night were two of J.J.'s drinking buddies, Robbie Newman and Mike Buttrick. Mike made his donation via the bar, ensuring the band was well lubricated before they hit the stage. Ripping on the flyjin in a moment of drunken debauchery Robbie blurted out "premature evacuation" which everybody agreed would be a pretty cool band name. And so that night the band was rechristened Premature Evacuation and that drunken performance, though extremely sloppy when viewing the DVD, went over so well that it led to other gigs.

Now that the song had some stage legs it was time to record it. J.J. laid down scratch tracks at his Jindaiji Monkey studios and Bull Durham headed to Houston where Mike Adams, aka Nitro Blues, recorded his keyboard. Drummer/engineer Glenn Rios of Austin, TX -most famous for his work with Don Leady in The Tail Gators and Alamo Suite- laid down drums and percussion with Leah Heptner as his assistant Engineer. Mark "pookie bear" Schwarz -best known for his Post-Punk Pookie Pop and being a longtime sidekick to J.J.V. in Tokyo who appears on many of his live recordings and built his ModBird guitar- headed down to Jindaiji Studio with his Rocket Revenger bass to lay down the tune's bass line. Wanting to include everybody, and just generally being a sick puppy, J.J. had Mike Buttrick record his infamous 4:00 A.M. gong. You gotta party with these guys down at the beach to get that inside joke. Oliver Richter, who did J.J.'s photo shoots and some of his live video, designed the jacket using a photo from the last shoot.

The instrumental is now available as a download single. Premature Evacuation has a separate account from J.J.'s solo albums. All proceeds from the sale of MELTDOWN, and any future Premature Evacuation releases, go directly to the recovery effort in northeastern Japan. When you buy this single you not only get a rockin' Surf instrumental to add to your music collection, you're helping the recovery effort.